a menace to my enemies

"And if I if I ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate I obey in lieu of impulse and realities (the blossoming flamingos of my wild mimosa trees) then let love freeze me out. I must become I must become a menace...

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

so uhhh... i’m back on tumblr to process my trauma publicly... i’m starting a CSA/incest recovery blog over at @brokenbutchchronicles if that’s something you’re interested in... it’s prolly gonna have a lot of triggering/traumatic content but I hope that sharing my story and journey can maybe help other people too.

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

tfw u have a nervous breakdown the likes of which you thought you got done with in your teens. #stillgotit 

[qasimaxillustration-deactivated]

A digital portrait I did of Joan Little, a shero from my home state of North Carolina:

In August 1974, Joan Little used an ice pick to defend herself from the prison guard that raped her, and liberated herself from incarceration. She was acquitted for the murder of the guard on the grounds of self-defense: a ground-breaking victory for women’s liberation.

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

I'm moving to qasimaxillustration, my art blog, as my primary tumblr! follow to keep in touch.

[shadowwraiths-deactivated201711]

A Trump rally.

[recoverystruggles]

DBT Handbook

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a form of therapy created by Marsha Linehan, PhD. It is a modified version Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with a focus on Mindfulness, which is pulled from Eastern mindfulness techniques. DBT was originally created to treat chronically suicidal and self-injuring individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), but has since been proven effective for many other mental illnesses including, but not limited to: depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, and self-injurers.

more info on DBT here and here

I first learned DBT two years ago at Timberline Knolls when I did residential, and it helped so much that I did a DBT intensive outpatient program when I got home from there. After “graduating” from my IOP, I created my own version of our DBT handbook that I could keep forever, basically. It took a long time- 28 pages- but it was worth it!

I wanted to share it with you all because I think everyone should learn DBT, whether they have mental health disorders or not!

[taviacw]

I probably wouldn’t be a good songwriter. I’m too honest.

[quillustrious-blog]

An illustrated quote from Audre Lorde’s “Litany for Survival” featuring a Black little red riding hood. Dedicated to all girl survivors of violence and sexual assault. Available as an 11"x17" poster print

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

check out my art! buy a print! please share!

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

y’all i made an art blog!

check my shit out! share the link! buy some prints! get your life! 

i do commissions!

i’m a lesbionic genderweird muslim crazy black gurl who makes shit and i need money!

[memeufacturing-deactivated20161]

me, a POC *with eyes watering from spicy food*: yes … im hhandling this spicy food well…, gotta earn this POC cred,. Gotta make my MOC (mama of color) proud … mm spicy food …….

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

PLEASE SHARE

hey fam,

some of you may know about my uncle Jake, who is an amazingly resilient, brilliant freedom fighter and freedom writer and has been incarcerated in Arizona since he was 17 years old. my uncle Jake has been a crucial source of love and support for me throughout my life. we have been exchanging letters since i was old enough to put a crayon to paper. 

he has a parole hearing coming up, and despite several years now in which he has been denied parole; we are staying positive and hopeful, and know that he and we will all get free someday, somehow. more immediately, however, having documentation of job offers, housing opportunities, and community supports that will be available to him upon release from prison can really help his chances of being paroled.

if any of y’all know anybody in AZ who has the authority to hire or grant job interviews for any paid position at all, please send me their contact info- and feel free to share my uncle’s cover letter, which is posted here below the cut.

pass along contact info in my inbox, via facebook, or to the email address below: 

Qasima Wideman

ladylettuce95 [at] gmail [dot] com

Greetings and best wishes. My name is Jake Wideman, and I have been incarcerated in the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) since 1988. I have an upcoming parole hearing, tentatively scheduled for November, and am attempting to find employment opportunities prior to my appearance before the Parole Board. I was referred to your organization by [Referrer], and am grateful to you for taking the time to read this letter.

I’d like to begin by providing you with a brief summary of the crime that led to my incarceration, and my journey during the years of my imprisonment. In 1986, at the age of 16, I committed a terrible crime: the murder of another 16-year-old boy. I not only took a precious life, I caused my victim’s loved ones and friends, as well as my own family, a great deal of pain and suffering. I have regretted what I did from the moment it occurred. Yet nothing I say or do can ever erase the crime I committed, nor remove the pain and suffering from all of those who my crime affected.  These facts have overwhelmed me at times as I’ve struggled with how to make amends and atone for what I did.

As time passed, I realized –with the help of many wonderful people—that all that was in my power to do was to take full responsibility for my crime, to find the underlying causes of my behavior and address them, and to commit myself to a path of personal growth, education, self-awareness, and service to others.  I recognize that I owe a debt I can never repay. But I can use the knowledge, skills, and wisdom that I acquire to serve individuals, communities, and particularly at-risk young men and women who may be able to benefit from my experiences.

I have done my best to live these commitments in many ways over the years of my incarceration.  I have sought to understand and address the causes of my crime through completing over 45 self-help and personal development programs offered by ADOC; by participating in mental health classes and individual therapy and counseling; and through years of reflection and self-study. I have also sought to prepare myself for the practical responsibilities of a life in the free world through academic and vocational education, re-entry programs, and by taking advantage of as wide a variety of job opportunities as possible.

In recent years I have become a peer mentor, counseling fellow inmates on issues related to prison life, personal growth, physical and mental fitness, the re-entry process and many other topics. I’ve also taught personal development classes such as (most recently) a course based on the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.

In July, I married my long-time partner Marta DeSoto, who is a PhD and licensed psychologist in private practice in the Greater Phoenix area. Upon my release, I’ll be living with her in our home in this area, and I need and intend to join the workforce immediately!

As you’ll see from my resume, I have a wide range of skills and abilities in areas ranging from counseling to physical fitness training, from business management to facilities maintenance. I’m willing to accept any position, and am confident I can deliver results that exceed expectations regardless of the type of work assigned to me. I am a conscientious employee who believes that any and every task to which I’m assigned deserves my best effort and full attention. I work very well with others, as I believe that teamwork and collaboration are the most effective methods for breeding innovation, creativity, sound problem-solving, and task completion in the workplace (or anywhere). I believe that my unique life experience has endowed me with perspectives, skills, and an exemplary work ethic that should translate well across a wide range of roles and organizations.

I’m asking for an opportunity to prove that I can be a great asset to your organization. Based on the information in this letter and the attached resume, would you please consider my candidacy for a position with your company? I’m not requesting a firm job offer, rather just a written pledge to be granted an employment interview with the appropriate manager, conditioned on my being granted parole in November. You’d be under no obligation to hire me, simply to grant me an interview. I’ll be happy to supply references who’ve worked directly with me prior to any scheduled interview.

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

lol i love being constantly displaced and moving all the time it’s the fuckin best lmao having so much fun rn

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

i am done craving validation for the reality of my pain. i’m done holding in my throat, in every interaction, the burning questions of “is my trauma real enough? am i fucked up enough to deserve to feel these things? have i been hurt bad enough, have i struggled enough? have i been through enough to have my resilience be a sufficient justification for my existence on this planet?”

because you know what? i am a survivor of child emotional abuse, i am a black queer muslim transmasculine person in the u.s. south, i have nightmares about being pulled over by police and i have lived those nightmares and the terror of believing in my heart of hearts THIS INTERACTION WITH A COP WILL BE MY LAST MOMENT ON EARTH and i have been beaten down and treated like shit and then interrogated about why i was crying and that is fucking real. my pain is fucking real and i am entitled to it, fuck anyone or anyone who’s ever made me question that. 

but i am also more than my pain. i also have a right to be here and i don’t need trauma to be my ticket into this world. i don’t need to get permission to exist by saying “here is all my baggage, look at it, look how i’ve suffered, don’t i at least deserve to be here?”

i am tender and i am loving and i am weird and i am awkward and i am shy and i hate myself sometimes but i own the space, the air, the time, the patches of universe that my body takes up and i won’t apologize or justify them by holding up my scars. 

i am a person and i fucking belong here and my pain is part of me and it doesn’t make me a bad person but i do not fucking NEED my pain and i do not want to live in a world where we need pain to exist.

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

i don’t give a fuck what white people and islamophobes have to say about islam. i demand the right to openly struggle with my faith, upbringing and cultural communities without throwing my people under the bus or being seen as complicit in the white supremacist violence we endure on the daily.

[ana--mia--recovery]

When people say “recovery”, you typically think of returning to how you were before your illness. But there is no going back. You do not merely recover, but reinvent yourself. You become something completely different from what you were before.

(via ana—mia—recovery)

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

what if i fail all my classes

what if i leave school because my dad is emotionally abusive and paying for my school and then i can never come back and then i can never get a job i can survive with and then i can never afford children or even a dog or like keep a car bc it keeps fucking breaking

what if my grandparents die ashamed of me cuz they know i’m gay and i don’t visit them enough because i know they know and can’t look them in the eyes anymore and what if they see me as a white person’s child because i’m ~queer~ and ~radical~ and my family is sad because of me forever

what if i’m realizing everything i know about ~organizing~ and ~the movement~ is not actually enough to keep me alive or create a world that doesn’t leave me and my people behind and i don’t actually know if i or any of us are gonna make it

what if i never get to stop moving and am constantly in transition

what if my dad is right and i actually just can’t hack it

what if i am actually just a white person now

what if i’m a lot less okay than i think i am

[whatchu-know-bout-me]

white people hosting "date" auctions STAY clueless about how gross that is. smdh.

[sinidentidades-blog]

[TW: Rape] Women face rape, harassment while working in US agriculture industry

Esther Abarca said the foreman drove to parts of the apple orchard that she had never seen. Deep into the ranch, in what she could describe only as a “desolate place,” he parked the truck, reached over and tried to grab her.

Weeping as she told her story, Abarca said the foreman got out of the truck when she resisted his advances. He opened the side door, climbed on top of her, and began to kiss and grope her. She called for help and tried to push him away, but he got her pants halfway off.

“I kept screaming, but there was nobody there,” Abarca said.

Abarca said she kept screaming as the foreman groped her. But then, as if suddenly chastened by her crying, kicking and pushing, she said he stopped. He told her that if she didn’t tell anyone what had happened, he’d give her $3,000 for a new car.

Abarca, a mother of three, said she refused the money.

“I told him that that was the very reason why I had come here to work, that I did not need him to give me any money at all,” she said.

The foreman’s alleged first assault came in 2009, during the long days of the Yakima Valley apple harvest in central Washington. An immigrant from Mexico, Abarca was new to the Evans Fruit Co., one of the country’s largest apple producers.

Nearly four years later, Abarca’s story was the subject of a federal court case testing whether the owners of Evans Fruit looked the other way as their workers claimed they were subjected to repeated sexual violence and harassment by an orchard foreman and crew bosses.

It was a rare public accusation for an immigrant, many of whom fear retaliation and deportation if they speak up. Abarca was testifying in only the second case of a farmworker claiming sexual harassment to reach a federal court trial.

Although the exact scope of sexual violence and harassment against agricultural workers is impossible to pinpoint, an investigation by The Center for Investigative Reporting and the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism reveals persistent peril for women working in the food industry. An estimated 560,000 women work on U.S. farms.

In partnership with FRONTLINE and Univision, CIR and IRP spent nearly a year reviewing thousands of pages of documents and crisscrossing the nation – from the tightly ordered orchards of the Yakima Valley to the leafy tomato fields of southern Florida – to hear workers’ stories of sexual assault.  

Hundreds of female agricultural workers have complained to the federal government about being raped and assaulted, verbally and physically harassed on the job, while law enforcement has done almost nothing to prosecute potential crimes.

In virtually all of the cases reviewed, the alleged perpetrators held positions of power over the women. Despite the accusations, these supervisors have remained on the job for years without fear of arrest.

At the trial, Abarca was among more than a dozen women who had accused a foreman, Juan Marin, and a handful of crew leaders at Evans Fruit of sexually assaulting or harassing them. For her part, Abarca said she had been topping off bins with just-picked apples when the foreman called to her from his pickup. He told her to get in the truck, she testified.

Marin said he never sexually assaulted or harassed Abarca or any of the other women, and he has not been arrested or prosecuted in criminal court for the allegations.

At a federal civil trial this year featuring 14 women telling their stories, a jury found that whatever had happened at Evans Fruit, it did not create a sexually hostile work environment, which had to be established before the company could be held liable.

Government attorneys who prosecuted the civil case have requested a new trial. In court filings, they called the verdict “unmoored from the actual evidence.”

Marin, who had worked for Evans Fruit for more than three decades, said the claims are based on lies and rumors spread by “a bunch of jealous people” who are trying to win money from the company.

“I’ve been accused of sexual harassment, and that’s completely a lie,” Marin said in one of several interviews. “Because I never bothered nobody. The only thing I’ve been doing in my life is work. To me it’s so unfair, because I never did nothing like that in my life.”

Nevertheless, two complaints against Marin prompted owner Bill Evans to write him a letter in 2006, four years before Marin was fired for alleged embezzlement.

“We don’t have the time or energy to continue dealing with the problems you are bringing down on us,” the letter said. “Any further incidents or complaints of sexual harassment and you will be discharged.”

The company drafted its first sexual harassment policy in 2008.